You know, I don't mean to jump into this conversation but you are saying everything that I want to say--thank you for articulating it so well.
"There is no way I can find that acceptable until such a time as they actually start modeling IRL what they are reading, which again, would actually be a plus. [...] That's like affixing an arrow and stating "There is something wrong here" and underlining twice that something is wrong in their real life that needs to be addressed."
It just sounds to me that you're saying that the issue is one of upbringing and "real life" issues and not something that can be affected by a book--and that since changing those real life issues is such a gargantuan, impossible task, that there's no point in looking at the representations of gender in the books at all. However, alongside some of the huge leaps of logic made here, I'm going to go ahead and propose the issue of the Rockdale county syphilis outbreak (1996?) that my friends from Conyers still laughingly recall. That was a case of a bunch of bored teens watching porn and emulating it until over a hundred of them contracted syphilis (note that this was not such a "tiny minority"). These people were my age and--knowing some of them--absolutely did not have the analytical facilities to separate fantasy and reality. I think that you have a very generous opinion of how the average teenager is able to sort through these socially-impressed ideas of gender and sexuality.
no subject
"There is no way I can find that acceptable until such a time as they actually start modeling IRL what they are reading, which again, would actually be a plus. [...] That's like affixing an arrow and stating "There is something wrong here" and underlining twice that something is wrong in their real life that needs to be addressed."
It just sounds to me that you're saying that the issue is one of upbringing and "real life" issues and not something that can be affected by a book--and that since changing those real life issues is such a gargantuan, impossible task, that there's no point in looking at the representations of gender in the books at all. However, alongside some of the huge leaps of logic made here, I'm going to go ahead and propose the issue of the Rockdale county syphilis outbreak (1996?) that my friends from Conyers still laughingly recall. That was a case of a bunch of bored teens watching porn and emulating it until over a hundred of them contracted syphilis (note that this was not such a "tiny minority"). These people were my age and--knowing some of them--absolutely did not have the analytical facilities to separate fantasy and reality. I think that you have a very generous opinion of how the average teenager is able to sort through these socially-impressed ideas of gender and sexuality.